shuffling

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of shuffle

plural shufflings

1. The act or motion of one who shuffles.

   As I lay waiting I could hear a sort of murmurousness beyond the door. It seemed composed of whimperings, slitherings, and shufflings, punctuated occasionally by a raised voice in the distance.

   1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 14

   1 more example

   Jane Gibson taught the cast the movements of the various creatures they were representing: the linear shufflings of the hedgehogs, the dozy lollopings of the rabbits, the sinuous dartings of the weasel and so on.

   2000, Alan Bennett, Writing Home

2. The noise created by something moving about.

   He would also have been exposed to the coughings and shufflings, comings and goings, questions and answers, wailings and slammings, snivellings and sneezings, etc., which figured so prominently in the reference room […]

   2011, John O'Loughlin, Two Sides of the Same Coin

3. datedTrickery.

   Then he warmed to it, and smoothly set out all his shifts, malices, and treacheries, his extreme boldnesses (he was desperate bold); his retreats, shufflings, and counterfeitings (he was also inconceivably a coward) […]

   1906, Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill

comparative more shuffling · superlative most shuffling

1. Moving with a dragging, scraping step.

   This world I do renounce, and in your sights / Shake patiently my great affliction off.

   c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]

2. Evasive.

   a shuffling excuse

   1712, Jonathan Swift, The History of John Bull